MADURAI: After three and a half-years of working at the Koyambedu vegetable market in Chennai, 48-year-old Masilamani* had saved Rs 20,000. On May 5, when the market was finally shut and he was effectively left without shelter, it was this cash that gave him the confidence to embark on a 500km-journey back home. By the time he reached his village of Chockalingapuram in Madurai district on May 8, he had discovered that the lockdown had effectively rendered money meaningless.
Masilamani was the first Koyambedu returnee to test positive for COVID-19 in the district on May 17. Now, at the Government Rajaji Hospital in Madurai, he recalled the three-day journey home as one filled with pain and hunger.
Masilamani moved to Chennai in 1985 after failing Class 8. He worked at juice shops, tea stalls and hotels, returning home in the village once a year or so. Three and a half years ago, he started working as a loadman at Koyambedu market, now considered a COVID-19 hotspot.
"My day starts at 2.30 am when I begin unloading sacks of onions and potatoes from lorries that arrive from Maharashtra (Nasik), Andhra or Uttar Pradesh (Agra) and weighing the sacks before the wholesalers and retailers take delivery. I wind up at around 6 pm, sleep for a while and then get back to work," he said.
He and three co-workers from Ariyalur district found it convenient to sleep at the shop, use public toilets to bathe and dine at roadside eateries rather than renting a room. He makes ₹10 for every sack, unloading 250-300 on a normal business day.
"When the government shut the market on May 5, I had nowhere to go. I had to make the hardest decision in my life so far -- to return home by foot as no other transport facility was available,” he recalled. That morning, he and four co-workers from Ariyalur decided they would start walking home, once dusk fell.
Clutching nothing but a bag stuffed with clothes and his lifetime savings of Rs.20,000, Masilamani began the walk with his co-workers that evening.
"We walked till Tambaram, after which we got a ride on a container lorry till Villupuram. At Villupuram, we got a ride on another lorry till Tholudur in Cuddalore district,” he said. At the end of the first day’s journey at Tholuthur, they branched out, four men to Ariyalur and Masilamani, alone, to Madurai.
“While in the company of four others, the journey did not seem as exhausting. It was only when we parted ways that I encountered some fear as to how I would reach home alone. Nevertheless, I began to walk," he said.
"About 45km past Tholudur, a good Samaritan on a two-wheeler who saw me trudging under the scorching sun, stopped and asked me where I was headed. At that moment tears filled in my eyes out of helplessness and gratitude. He gave me a lift for some distance, before leaving for his destination," he said.
"Till I reached Tiruchy border, there was no shop open. I was forced to fill my stomach with water fetched from fuel stations and roadside taps. As the heat was unbearable during the day, I took shelter beneath trees in the afternoons and walked only after sunset," he recalled.
"Technology was of no use for a layman like me during that time of distress. I only had the signboards on deserted highways guiding my way. The wad of currency notes, the result of years of toil, turned into meaningless pieces of paper that could not feed me when I was starving and needed a way to get home,” he said.
“Out of sheer exertion, excruciating physical pain and mental torment, an inner voice in my head started asking if I needed to live such a life at all,” he revealed.
“Yet, I continued to walk."
When he finally reached his village on the evening of May 8, the villagers who usually greeted him shied away. “Perhaps they were scared of contracting the infection from me as I had returned from a hotspot,” he mused.
"After resting for a short while, I cooked myself a simple meal before going into a deep slumber. I don't know if it was for two or three days that I slept. Such was the fatigue and pain," Masilamani said.
When he woke up, he went straight to the Government Hospital at Kottampatti to get himself tested for COVID-19. "Although asymptomatic, I feared I may have contracted the virus while working in the hotspot so I volunteered for the test," he said.
"The hospital staff collected my details and advised me to be in home quarantine. Three days later, healthcare workers visited me at home and asked me to report to Karungalakudi Primary Health Centre for a COVID-19 test. There my swab samples were lifted on May 15. From the PHC, I was taken to a quarantine facility at a college and was lodged there until May 17 when my test results arrived," he said.
"All these years, I have been happy living alone, choosing celibacy. But, loneliness and fear hit me very hard only as I was being taken from the college to the GRH. It was then that I started feeling frightened about being isolated,” he said, adding that he was estranged from his mother and brother.
“Now, the feeling is gone and I am hopeful of returning home after recovery,” he said, adding that for a man who had worked like a Trojan all his life, staying idle at the hospital and eating and sleeping through the day felt like the harshest punishment.
Asked why he had embarked on such an arduous journey to his village if he had no close family there, Masilamani’s reply was simple.
“It is my home.”
(*name changed)